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CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Demand-response transportation (DRT) systems--from large metropolitan services to small,
community-based programs--face pressures to improve performance, with increasing demand
for service and financial constraints. To improve performance, the characteristics of DRT and
the factors that impact performance must be understood. Consistently defined data and clearly
defined performance measures are also needed so that DRT performance can be evaluated in a
systematic manner. Assessments of DRT performance, both individual system evaluations over
time as well as peer comparisons across the industry, will then be more reliable and meaningful.
1.1 Development of Guidebook and Relationship
to TCRP Report 124
This Guidebook has been prepared under TCRP Project B-31, "Guidebook for Measuring,
Assessing, and Improving Performance of Demand-Response Transportation." The stated objec-
tive of the research project was to develop a resource that provides guidance for measuring, eval-
uating, and improving DRT performance with a methodology that recognizes the diversity of
DRT services, service areas, and passengers.
The research project has resulted in two guidebooks. The first focused on DRT systems in urban
areas and was published in 2008 as TCRP Report 124: Guidebook for Measuring, Assessing, and
Improving Performance of Demand-Response Transportation. This is TCRP Project B-13's second
guidebook and, given the important distinctions between DRT in rural and urban areas, it addresses
rural DRT.
Early efforts in the research project established that rural DRT systems have very different
characteristics and data-collection issues relative to performance measurement compared with
urban DRT systems. The research project's panel then determined that a separate guidebook for
rural DRT was needed to adequately address performance measurement and improvement for
rural systems.
The research team followed a similar methodology in developing the Guidebook for rural
DRT as was followed for the project's first guidebook, which has included
· Developing a typology of rural DRT systems based on criteria affecting performance,
· Defining key performance data and a limited set of performance measures for DRT,
· Identifying the various factors that influence DRT performance,
· Collecting performance data from DRT systems representative of the defined categories,
· Identifying actions that rural DRT systems have implemented to improve their perfor-
mance, and
· Documenting quantitative and qualitative effects on performance from those actions.
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